


Ashes in the Wind

by scullyphile



Category: The X-Files
Genre: After the Episode, F/M, MSR, milagro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 07:51:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5240486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyphile/pseuds/scullyphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully right after Milagro, starting with the hug on the floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes in the Wind

Fire steals. It burns the information my partner and I are trying to compile, consumes the truth, transforms it into heat and light and ash. All that’s left is us: our memories, our minds, our word. We fuel our need for answers by giving of ourselves. We reach down, over and over, into the pit of our souls and pull out everything we have to give. If we do not rest we give until there is nothing left, until we collapse.

At night I am tired and, sometimes, lonely. I tell myself, although I don’t always believe it, that loneliness is a choice, that I am not lonely. To prove it, I go to him. I see myself as a balm for the raw parts of him. Lately, I see that he is the same for me. 

This time, fire stole but also gave. My partner tells me fire gave me back my life, that it took away the danger that had threatened me. Although I was the one who first suggested that Philip Padgett might merely be imagining the events of the murders we were investigating, I am not able to accept that by imagining them he also made them true. 

Mulder believes it. He says he read the pages before they burned. 

When I came to, I was terrified. My fear came not from being attacked, exactly, although I vividly remember my hand groping for my gun. I remember being unable to reach it, unable to save myself. It was, however, the simple fact that I had stopped breathing that terrified me. It was primal, a reflex. In that moment I was afraid I would never fill my lungs again.

But I saw Mulder, and the air rushed in. I know that I cried, that I clawed at his back, unsure if he was solid. If I didn’t know for certain that my attacker had been real, how could I know that my partner was? 

I knew he was real by the smell of his soap. I knew by the feel of his cheek on mine, by the way he whispered my name with a mix of desperation and reassurance.

“Scully.”

The blood. Where had the blood come from? The man who attacked me had carried no weapon. It was something out of a nightmare, something out of a case that only we could be assigned.

“Scully, I’m here.”

It was a mantra, a chant. My mind picked it up and made it mine. _He’s here. He’s here. I’m alive; I’m breathing. I am not alone._

He tore open my shirt, sending several of the buttons flying, and ran his hands over my blood-covered stomach and breastbone. This was not how I had imagined Mulder tearing my shirt off so many times previously as I lay in my bed. The reasons were all wrong. The feelings were not the ones I wanted. 

“You’re not hurt. There’s no cut, no incision,” he said, as his hands went over me again. “He burned it. You’re going to be OK. It’s over.”

He picked me up. I was still clinging to him, burying my face in the crook of his neck. He sat on the couch with me in his arms until I fell asleep. 

I woke at dawn, sticky with blood, and my shirt still hung open. I pried myself from his arms without disturbing him, showered, and pulled on my pants. There was some blood on the pants, but they were dark. I could get home without turning heads and throw them away there. My shirt was ruined, as well as my bra and jacket. I threw them all in the trash and put on one of his t-shirts and one of his suit jackets over it.

He was resting peacefully on the couch when I closed his door behind me and left. His jacket on my shoulders gave me comfort and strength. I wrapped myself up in it and crossed my arms tightly over my stomach to hold it closed against the cold as I walked.


End file.
